Designing a Mobile-Based Self-Care Application for Patients with Heart Failure

Patients with heart failure experience debilitating symptoms lowering their life quality. Patients must use several methods of self-care in order to reduce symptoms and the rate of hospitalization and to improve their quality of life. The main purpose of this study was to design and create a mobile-based self-care application for patients with heart failure.
This was an applied developmental study. Initially, a questionnaire was prepared to assess information requierments, determine data elements and necessary capacities of the application. Then, 20 cardiologists working in Shahid Madany hospital, the specialty center of cardiovascular surgery affiliated to Tabriz University of Medical Sciences were asked to fill out the questionnaire. The obtained data were analysed and the application was developed accordingly. Finally, in order to evaluate its practical capability and patients’ satisfaction rate, it was used by 10 patients with heart failure.
The majority of data elements in the questionnaire were found necessary by the cardiologists. The main features of the designed application included alerts for daily monitoring, visit time and reminders of time of drug use, hypertention, increase of heart rate and weight gain. In evaluation of practical capability of the application by patients, it was evaluated in a good level with the mean score of 7.8 (out of 9).
Mobile-based self-care applications can be used to help patients with heart failure to manage their disease and to obtain self-care skills.